Page 190 of Librarian

His face is skeletal, those same black veins forking out from his jaw and his temples. His eyes are bloodshot and empty, seething with rage as he stalks forward.

Three grimoires still orbit his waist, but his blighted skin has blistered and peeled, leaving sores across his hands that ooze as he touches the pages.

“I was prepared to be merciful,” he snarls. “I would have let the adepts among you rule your families under me and preserve the traditions of our people, as long as you toed the line.”

A bolt of lightning soars straight for Dakari, but he’s ready for it, lifting a table to intercept the blast with a wave of his hand.

My relief is short-lived as the electricity hits the wood and more pain whispers up my spine.

The building. I’m feeling the building’s pain. I can’t feel my own toes, but when Leo dodges out of the way of a fireball, and it hits the floor, the answering burn flashes across my chest, scalding me.

They’re battling with a powerful lich, and I can’t protect them. All I can do is stand here and feel every single wayward blow. Every single strike is another stab into the haemorrhaging heart of the Arcanaeum—myheart.

Mathias’s lip curls. “But you six followed that ridiculous excuse of a Librarian to the very end, and look where it’s got you.”

“Where is she?” North demands, his hand on his grimoire as he sends a javelin of ice straight at the lich. “What did you do to her?”

Nothing. Mathias did nothing, but joy lights up his face as he puts my absence together with North’s words.

“I didn’t do anything.” A dark grin splits his face as his hand shifts to the third grimoire. “But if she’s not already dead, she’ll be joining the rest of you in the afterlife very soon.”

Fifty-Three

Jasper

She cannae be gone.

I’m still in denial as I dive into the nearest crate and lob one of the bombs inside straight at the lich’s smarmy face. Eddy does the same. The projectiles bounce off Mathias’s shield, splashing the desks around him with acid, but leaving him completely unharmed.

Fuck.

Lambert launches himself over the edge of the balcony. His skin turns to rock to protect him from the impact, but he still lands hard, cracking the floorboards below.

North and Pierce are raining magic on Mathias like they can wipe him from the face of the earth if they try hard enough. I can’t help but feel useless in comparison. Destruction isn’t my school. Not that their attacks are doing much. The ice and lightning they’re sending his way is absorbed by the shield just like everything else.

Above us, the beams groan.Crack.

Wood that has stood strong for a thousand years begins to split.

A glance at Dakari says this time it’s not his doing. He’s too busy hoisting every reading table he can at the asshole. Not that any of it is making a dent.

Mathias, however, is still chanting, fingers splayed across his grimoires.

The beams croak a final warning.

“Move!” I shove Eddy closer to the others.

She stumbles over one of the dead revenants beneath our feet, and my heart swoops as I reach for my grimoire blindly.

A pearly white shield erupts over our heads just in time for the glass and wood to come raining down. The lethal mess passes harmlessly over our heads, and Eddy shoots me a grateful look.

I cannae do anything about the stray piece of glass plummeting towards Leo, but Dakari slams it away with a burst of magic.

It crashes into a shelf instead.

Mathias scowls, unleashing a volley of ice at us. Fuck, fuck, fuck! My shield dissolves and reforms in front of North, just in time to deflect the icicles. They spear into the shelf three inches to his left.

Stars, that was close.